Chapter 1

Jenny and I had fun apartment hunting at first, but it turned into a real grind before we found a place in Crawford that fit our specifications. We had been warned, so we found an apartment with an attached fully-enclosed garage. Our first goal was to do something about the crime rate in the city. Crawford was a nice place, but it was being slowly strangled by gang-related crime.

We decided that we needed to get some idea of what the current life in the city was like, so we decided to take a little walk around the neighborhood after dark. We had our full arsenal with us, but we only took our .45 caliber Glocks with us on this outing. We could not be injured by bullets or knives, and we were strong enough not to need weapons beyond what we were born with. However, we did feel that we might need the guns to protect some innocent bystander, so we took them. We had our concealed carry permits from Arizona, so we figured that we were safe from the police. We would claim that we had just moved in and would go tomorrow to get a California permit.

We dressed as best we could as ordinary citizens so that we would not advertise that we were looking for trouble. From the reputation of Crawford, the kind of trouble we wanted would find us. We stepped into a convenience store and asked the clerk, "Hi, we are new to the neighborhood, and we have heard that there are sections that we should avoid. Can you tell us what they are so that we won't wander into them by mistake?"

The clerk was very helpful and gave us detailed instructions of the sections of town to avoid. We thanked him and walked back out into the street after paying for a couple of cans of Dr. Pepper. As soon as we were out of sight of the helpful clerk, we headed toward the nearest place we were told to avoid. It was only four blocks away, so we were quickly there.

This section of town looked like it had last been cleaned up about 25 years ago. There was trash in the street, and every building looked like it badly needed a good washing. Most of them also badly needed painting. It seemed like nobody around here cared what the place looked like.

We had only walked half a block when we were confronted by three thugs, at least they looked the part. They were Black, and the first thing one of them said was, "What the hell do you damned honkies think you're doing in our territory? You look like you need a lesson in manners."

I almost laughed at that statement, but I was trying hard to stay in character. "What do you mean about your territory? This is a public sidewalk, and we can use it anytime we want to."

"Look here, you White SOB (Son of a Bitch), this is our territory because we are strong enough to keep wimps like you and your bitch out. So what do you say to that?"

I said, "Get your black ass out of our way, Nigger, or I will splatter the street with your blood!"

Aha! Now I was getting the reaction that I expected. All three of the men in front of us reached into pockets and produced knives. The spokesman of the group said, "Okay, Smart Ass, you are in trouble now. I'm going to cut your gut open and fuck your bitch until she screams in pleasure."

I was getting bored with the conversation, so I spit on the toe of his shoe. That was enough to break the hesitation, and the spokesman jerked his hand forward to stab me in my belly. Meanwhile, another one grabbed hold of Jenny and started to pull her toward an alley not far away.

The man had stabbed so hard that the knife slid back in his hand with it stopped moving forward as it was blocked by my skin. Sure, he cut the fabric of my shirt, but that was a far forward as the knife would go. He screamed in surprise more than pain when the blade slid back far enough to cut his fingers.

I wanted to make a point, so I did no hit him as hard as I could when I poked him in the solar plexus. He did expel all of his breath, but I did not hit him hard enough to rupture his internal organs. He fell to the sidewalk and was out of action for the moment.

The third man's eyes bulged when he saw what had happened to the knife his friend had tried to use to stab me. That guy was smarter than the average bear and turned to flee. He had gotten about five steps of a head start on me, but I had no trouble catching him because I could run so much faster than he possibly could.

I grabbed his belt and pulled him to a halt. At that point, he tried to slash me with his knife, but I simply held up my arm and let him strike it with the knife arm. He dropped the knife and screamed as both bones broke in his right forearm. He was in so much pain that he did not resist when I dragged him back to where his friend was lying on the sidewalk.

I pulled both of them into the alley and waited a moment for my eyes to adjust to the reduced light. After a few seconds, I could see almost as well as I could out under the streetlights. There was Jenny with the man who had been holding her. She had both his arms held behind his back and pulled up so that he could not move without considerable pain. I grinned at her and she grinned back. "Billy, do you want me to tie this sorry excuse for a man with cable ties?"

"Yeah, go ahead. These three should be able to tell us some of what we want to know about the after-hours street life in the fair city of Crawford."

We set about to learn all we could about the gang operations in this neighborhood. One of the things we found out was that the spokesman for this group was known as "Big Al," and he was a terror to just about everyone else who lived around here. There were two gangs that operated in this neighborhood, and there was a very uneasy peace between them. The least little thing could set off a gang war that was libel to hurt a lot of innocents.

Big Al and his two friends belonged to the "Honky Haters," and the other gang was the "Black Shirts." Both gangs were made of up Blacks, but about 10 blocks over to the west was an Hispanic gang known as the "Diablos." The problem with the Diablos was that they were prone to use guns, and they were known to spray bullets at the slightest provocation. They would certainly warrant a visit from us pretty soon.

Just to let the Honky Haters know that we were a force to be reckoned with, we broke the right elbow of each of the three captives. All three were bare from the waist down where they had had their testicles pinched by Jenny to prompt them for the information that we wanted. By the way, that was adding insult to injury since Jenny was a woman, and White at that. I did use Big Al's cellphone to call 911 before we left. These guys had to live through the night if word of our presence was to get around where it would do the most good.

This was a slow night judging from the fact that we wandered around for another hour without seeing another person. It looked like we weren't going to get any more action tonight, so we went back to our apartment. The rest of the evening was spent trying to make Jenny pregnant.

The next day was spent getting the apartment in order. It was a furnished apartment, but it still lacked many of the items that we were used to, so we had a lot of small items to purchase. We then looked into getting California driver's licenses and gun permits. Uh-oh, it was going to take more than one day to register our pickup and get driver's licenses, and the same was true for our gun permits. Well, we got the wheels turning on those jobs, but we were not expecting fast results. We figured that to be California's problem and not ours.

It took us a week to get everything squared away and legal, and some of it was a real pain in the ass, but we finally settled everything, and the state seemed to be happy. If they were happy, we were happy and set out to do what we had come here for. Man, it's hard to be nice to some people.